In need of Drag Strip advice and wisdom for running Drag Radials.

[SRT8_801]

I need help fellow SRT8 owners and drag strip warriors. I took my SRT8 to drag strip this weekend for some ¼ mile action. I ran 14.01 with trap speed of 102.3 mph. I know you guys are saying that is just crappy, but let me tell you why, I live in Salt Lake City which is 4300 ft above sea level and the temp was 96 degrees. My mods are Canned Diablo tune, MagnaFlow catback exhaust, Mopar HAI. I also threw on some 17’s from a Magnum SE with Nitto Extreme Z rated tires (225/40/17) and I spun the tires from start to 60ft which killed my 60ft and 330. My 60’ was 2.350 and 330 was 6.089, 1/8 mile got better and so forth.
My question is I am thinking bout going with Toyo R888 Drag radial tires, close to slicks. Is this a good tire? And most importantly do I need to do anything beside add driveshaft loop? Is the current stock half shafts strong enough to handle the grip from the torque? I have heard through the grapevine & forums of SRT8 snapping half shafts from too much torque running slicks and drags. Please let me know your take, suggestion, advice and experience on what is best for running drag radials. Thanks in advance for your input.

Chris

here is a Video of me running 17"s and yes they do fit, just barely. Alot of wheel spin and smoke through 60ft.

[stevesrt8]

You are entering dangerous territory.

These cars DO snap halfshafts if you get too much traction.

I personally feel you are so high that your lack of power will protect you a bit, but the minute you take off the street tires all bets are off.

Can you provide the D/A for your runs?

[srt8man]

14.01 is pretty good run for your DA. I assume you were at Rocky Mountain Raceways. I did my best to estimate your DA. That was a lot of wheelspin in the video though.

I grabbed some weather data for Saturday, July 18 at 12:53 PM and this is what I got:

TRACK AND WEATHER DATA
Track Elevation: 4226 feet above sea level
Air Temperature: 98.1 degrees F
Barometric Pressure: 29.94 inches Hg
Relative Humidty: 17%
Density Altitude: 7705 feet above sea level

UNCORRECTED
1/4 mile ET: 14.01 seconds
1/4 mile trap speed: 102.3 MPH

CORRECTED FOR DA
Stock and Mildly Modified Naturally Aspirated Engines
-- 12.649 @ 112.936 MPH
Extensively Modified Naturally Aspirated Engines
-- 12.932 @ 110.316 MPH
Extensively Modified Supercharged and Turbocharged Engines
-- 13.417 @ 106.641 MPH

By the way, the DA Calculator can be found here if you want to correct any of your other times. This DA calculator lets you choose your track and date, and then it gets the weather data and calculates your DA based on that data:

DA Calculator - Density Altitude Calculator - DragTimes.com

I agree with Steve regarding the drag radials or slicks. If you hook up "too good" you may break something. It's better to spin a little than it is to break your halfshafts.

[SRT8_801]

Thanks Steve & Ken, I really do appreciate the advice & input. So the tires I am looking into are not true slicks, but rather street legal radials with alot of high grip race compound for much need transaction. I wont be upgrading to True Slicks until I get differential, so I think my half shafts will be safe or at least I am hoping so.

And here are the tires that I was referring to;
http://toyotires.com/tire/pattern/proxes-r888

Anyone running these? Have any feedback on them?

[srt8man]

Those are street legal, but they appear to be drag radials. Although they don't provide as much grip as slicks, you may still have some problems if your SRT8 hooks up real good with them. Take a look at the tread pattern on them and you will see that it is very close to a slick because there is very little tread. I don't have any experience with these tires, but I'm pretty sure there are a few members here who have used drag radials like those at the track.

Do you plan to use them strictly at the track or are you planning to use them year round on the street too? Based on the tread pattern, I would suspect they would be downright scary on wet surfaces. They will definitely improve dry traction, but wet traction will not be good and forget about using them in the snow (if that is important to you).

I personally would go with something that would have better all season performance. Many people rave about the Toyo Proxes 4 tires. These are the ones I will most likely replace my stock tires with:

PROXES 4 | Toyo Tires

Good luck, and I hope someone else can provide you with some first-hand information about drag radials.

Originally Posted by SRT8_801

Thanks Steve & Ken, I really do appreciate the advice & input. So the tires I am looking into are not true slicks, but rather street legal radials with alot of high grip race compound for much need transaction. I wont be upgrading to True Slicks until I get differential, so I think my half shafts will be safe or at least I am hoping so.

And here are the tires that I was referring to;
http://toyotires.com/tire/pattern/proxes-r888

Anyone running these? Have any feedback on them?

[EricG]

From being around quite a few people running drag radials, there are a couple things that stress the half shaft, the burnout and then how you launch the car. The open diff we have compensates one-wheel spinning by pulsating the brake and sending torque to the other wheel. Now our brake-lock diff works great on normal pavement and almost acts just like a real LSD, but on super sticky surfaces like a drag strip you always get a wheel spinning and then stopping and then spinning again, and that creates a lot of stress on the half shaft and can break them. To avoid this stress, slowly start spinning your tires - you will only spin one usually, creep forward a foot and do it again, creep forward a foot and do it again. After about three or four little sessions like that you can usually get them both spinning and when you have them both going do a nice burnout. Something about inching forward makes the other tire want to spin and eventually makes them both spin. If you just sit and stab the throttle on and off and get frustrated in the burnout box you get a more violent starting and stopping to the spinning and an axle can break. You can see in this video that the water box is your friend too.

New Dodge Charger - Car Videos on StreetFire
-That car has the Corsa exhaust BTW, with Mickey Thompson ET streets. I bet the supercharged Mustang in the other lane was planning on winning that race

The other very stressful thing on the axles is the launch. If you want the best 60 foot time possible, just floor the car off idle and hope the drag radials stick. I believe that is called flashing the converter. That is very hard on the axles and is actually the way the Charger in the video above broke one on the passenger side early this spring. If you hold the break and build revs while the car is stopped you can take a lot of stress off the driveline and axles by loading the drivetrain. Don't hold the revs too long though or the car's computer gets confused and starts pulling timing, anticipate building the revs as the lights start to drop down the tree...practice makes perfect. You can still get good 60 foot times this way, but probably not as good as just flooring the car.

Good luck.